A Formal Model of Corruption, Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service

Sebastian Barfort; Nikolaj Arpe Harmon; Frederik Georg Hjorth; Asmus Leth Olsen

A Formal Model of Corruption, Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service

Sebastian Barfort, Nikolaj Arpe Harmon, Frederik Georg Hjorth, Asmus Leth Olsen

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Abstract

Recent empirical studies have found that in high corruption countries, inherently more
dishonest individuals are more likely to want to enter into public service, while the reverse
is true in low corruption countries. In this note, we provide a simple formal model that
rationalizes this empirical pattern as the result of countries being stuck in different selfsustaining
equilibria where high levels of corruption and negative selection into public
service are mutually reinforcing.

Original language	English
Number of pages	16
Publication status	Published - 2015

Keywords

Faculty of Social Sciences
corruption
dishonesty
public service motivation
experiments
dice game method

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KW - dice game method

M3 - Working paper

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A Formal Model of Corruption, Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service

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Keywords

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